RUCO task force meeting rescheduled because of lack of public notice

First, a correction. The RUCO task force meeting was actually scheduled for 9 a.m. this morning, not 8 a.m., as I previously reported.

Second, this morning's meeting had to be rescheduled because the public was not properly notified, in the judgment of the city's legal staff.

Lisa Dellinger, who chairs the task force and who is the residential property manager for Koury Corp, said during a brief discussion around the table that Greensboro Engineering & Inspections Director Butch Simmons had called her and said that City Attorney Terry Wood wanted to know if the meeting had been publicly advertised. Dellinger said it's the city's responsibility to notify the media, not the volunteer body that she chairs. She noted, as an irony, that "I'd heard that people were already blogging about it."

"Officially, we cannot conduct business today," she said.

Apparently, blogging is an effective means of delivering news.

The task force will meet on July 21 at 2:30 p.m. and July 29 at 2:30 p.m. to craft a proposal for the RUCO Board to consider at its next meeting on Aug. 5 at 8:30 a.m. Then, the RUCO Board will make a recommendation to city council, which will make the final decision. The task force meetings will take place at TREBIC, and the RUCO Board meeting will take place at the city's 1001 4th St. building.

Bobby Akin, president of Greensboro Landlords Association, asked that "everybody come ready [at the next meeting] with their opinions for how to move this RUCO forward."

Beth McKee-Huger, executive director of Greensboro Housing Coalition, added that if all the task force members outlined areas of interest, the group could identify points of agreement.

That was the extent of formal discussion about the task force's agenda.

Dellinger next raised the issue of the meeting location, which is in the conference room of the building the Triad Real Estate and Building Industries Coalition, or TREBIC, shares with the Greensboro Builders Association.

"In these blogs, there's some issues made about where we're meeting," Dellinger said.

Some discussion was held about the fact that the RUCO task force has always met at TREBIC's conference room, and it's a location that's convenient for all the members.

"The theory is that where you meet is where the power is," said Donna Newton, advisor to the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress. "As one committee member, I have no problem. It's never inhibited our discussion."

McKee-Huger and Dan Reynolds, inspection manager for the Greensboro Engineering & Inspections Department, said they also have no problem with meeting at TREBIC.

A couple task force members made a point to say that they don't read blogs, although discussion on blogs does filter back to them.

The discussion continued, with Newton remarking that she had sent out an e-mail to her constituents at the neighborhood congress stating that some information in a recent News & Record article was incorrect, and stating that she had spoken to the reporter about it.

McKee-Huger mentioned the housing coalition's Healthy Homes bus tour, and asked whether anyone had any properties they would like to nominate.

Akin asked Reynolds if he had the number of fines that have been issued as a result of the RUCO ordinance.

After about 10 minutes, the task force members left the table, but some stuck around — granting interviews to members of the media and chatting among themselves.

Marlene Sanford said afterward that the task force's mandate is "to come up with a proposal for the RUCO Board to consider." She said it was fair to describe part of the mandate as evaluating the effectiveness of the program, using new data that has been gathered since the task force was last convened two years ago. I asked whether a possible recommendation from the task force might be that the program be scaled back or expanded. Sanford replied that it was probably best to stick with the term "amended."

Reynolds said the roster of this task force is somewhat different in that it includes Jeff Sims, a member of the RUCO Board.